Crossing the Driftless

by Lynne Diebel

  Just past the bridge at Muscoda, we pull into the Victora Riverside landing. Aluminum rental canoes are stacked in great piles on the grass and lashed in tall tiers on canoe trailers. Paddlers are landing, launching, waiting to launch, and just milling about, watching the river. A tall man, probably in his thirties, strides down the concrete slope, a long slender racing canoe slung effortlessly over his shoulder, a paddle in one hand. In a smooth, practiced move, he drops his narrow craft into the shallow water, slides in, and begins paddling upstream with the powerful efficient strokes of an experienced racer. A little girl wearing her pink lifejacket stands on the ramp, silently watching him disappear around the bend. Muscoda’s Wisconsin River Canoe and Kayak Race is just two weeks away, and our paddler is no doubt training hard to compete with racers from Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and of course Wisconsin: the Big Five Challenge. On the longest stretch of the race, the twenty-one miles from the bridge near Spring Green down to this landing in Muscoda, the top canoeists finish in only two and a half hours, over eight miles an hour on a river that’s hard to read. This guy looks like he’s a contender.

  As we fill our water bottles at the outdoor faucet, Bob and I chat with Steve and Brandy, young people who live in Chicago and are visiting the river with friends, tenting at the adjoining campground for the Fourth of July weekend. They aren’t sure whether they’ll paddle today; the weather’s still cool and gray and they enjoy the spectator sport of watching paddlers launch and land. Brandy says they love being on the Wisconsin.

  “Do you know where there’s a grocery store?” asks Bob.

  “The closest one is almost a mile away,” replies Steve. “There’s a convenience store closer but it doesn’t have much. We’ll give you a ride to the grocery,” he adds. “We’re not busy.”

  Bob returns with three full bags slung over his arms and a big smile on his face. Our cooler replenished through the kindness of strangers, we head upstream, though not nearly as swiftly as that lone racer. And the Wisconsin is even more crowded now. No longer does the river seem the secluded and almost wild place we traveled two days ago.

  It used to be true that the river between Prairie du Sac and Lone Rock was the most popular paddling route. Almost every summer weekend, canoe campers would float downstream on this reach, often in makeshift barges, constructed by lashing up to four canoes together, loaded with camping equipment, coolers full of beer, firewood, and battery-powered boomboxes, cranked up to high volume. Mark Cupp of the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway Board told me that kind of river party has waned and he is glad. Canoe rental business owner Scott Teuber said he now urges people to choose the reach of the river between Spring Green and Boscobel. They both want to find the fine balance point between people enjoying the river and too many people using and sometimes abusing it.

  Teuber said he feels that many people who live here in southern Wisconsin don’t know much about the Lower Wisconsin River. “People who drive over the river don’t really see it,” he said. “Perhaps because a lot of them live so close by and don’t see the point of visiting something local. They don’t realize what’s here—the sandbar camping; the wide, shallow river; the bluffs.”

  Along the north bank, the houses of the tiny town of Orion are visible and we head that way, weaving our path among fishermen buzzing about in small motorboats, a steady stream of canoeists drifting past, some holiday celebrators floating downstream on inner tubes and rubber rafts. Campers and picnickers festoon the sandbars.

  Oblivious to all this busyness, an unusual state natural area lies, quiet and invisible, on the river bottom along the north shore. We follow the several miles of wooded shoreline along which the Orion Mussel Bed State Natural Area stretches, past the mouth of Indian Creek, partly concealed by a fallen tree, past the boat landing, upstream toward tall Bogus Bluff and its rocky outcroppings. Peering occasionally into the murky water, I see no mussels, though I want to. In my imagination their mollusk bodies are arranged on the gravel riverbed like the stars in my favorite winter constellation, perhaps with three oblong lilliput mussels in a row forming the familiar hunter’s belt, their unassuming brown shells concealing the iridescent star-like inner beauty of their nacre.

  Yet the future of Orion is uncertain. “The Orion mussel bed has been clearly declining since 1988, when we started monitoring it, though this may have been going on for much longer,” said Wisconsin DNR biologist David Heath. “We have mussel records for the state that go back to 1820, and though the northern half of the state is holding its own, the southern half shows drastic declines all over, probably because of more development down here. On the Lower Wisconsin, it may be due to water quality and fluctuating water levels as well. Because the river gets higher peak flow more often now, the gravel and rock substrate that the mussels live on is disturbed more often. And with more low water times, the beds dry up and the mussels die.” Because of these stresses, Heath added, there’s very little reproduction, way below replacement levels. Of the approximately twenty-eight mussel beds that lie along the Lower Wisconsin, Orion is one of the most important. Other significant beds are located at Bridgeport, Port Andrew, Lone Rock, Sweet Island and Peck’s Landing, and Mazomanie Flats. Yet all are declining.

  We leave Bogus Bluff on a diagonal heading toward the south side of the river and soon reach the shore of the Riverway’s Avoca Unit, more than 5,700 acres of wetlands, bottomland hardwood forest, tall-grass prairie, and oak savanna sprawling along ten miles of shoreline over the valley’s wide sandy outwash terrace. As the river begins its big bend toward the south, the shoreline is low and heavily wooded. But not with elms.

  “When the Riverway was being designed, all the American elms were dying of Dutch elm disease—those beautiful big trees aren’t there anymore,” said Riverway planner Gary Birch. Other species are gone as well.

  Before dams were built on the Wisconsin, the river always flooded in the spring, often shifting its channel during those turbulent spring freshets. By late summer, the flow was low and the river was shallow. Trees in the bottoms were accustomed to lots and lots of spring flooding. Brad Hutnik, Wisconsin DNR forest ecologist and silviculturist, explained that these historical spring floods helped certain trees flourish. Cottonwood, black willow, and river birch, trees that drop their seeds in the spring, took advantage of the open soil that follows the spring freshet to get established.

  As the river adapted to the effect of the dams, changes during the annual flow cycle diminished. “Seasonally, the river doesn’t go nearly as high or as low,” said Hutnik, “so some trees aren’t as common as they used to be.” Other species, such as hackberry and bitternut hickory, are taking their places. In an effort to anticipate future shifts in tree populations that may come with climate change, foresters have experimented with planting southern species such as sycamore near Bridgeport, in an area where they will do well if the climate warms. “We still have healthy forests,” he added. “And we know that man is not separate from the ecosystem. We try to emulate the natural process in our management of the state land, but nothing is pristine. There have been people here for a long time, and the Native Americans made their own changes, like regular burning.” But in contrast to rivers that are farmed right up to the riverbank, Hutnik said, “The Lower Wisconsin is kind of an aberration. Because of its wide bottomland, dry, sandy nature, and flooding, row crops have never been able to get very close to this river.”

  We’re around the bend and headed southeast now, passing the open land of the Avoca Prairie. No more houses anywhere in sight. The prairie terrain is a mix of upland and wetland, a quietly beautiful place where we have hiked several times. From the parking area at the end of Hay Lane, an access road off Highway 133, it takes only about twenty minutes to cross the shallow flow of a slough named Avoca Lake and walk the trail all the way to the river, generally in the company of singing birds and various unidentified rustlings in the grass. On scattered upland rises, oak savannas punctuate the floodplain. The Avoca Prairie is
one of the largest tall-grass prairies east of the Mississippi. The Riverway designers decided at some point that there should be a road through the prairie to the river, and Hay Lane was installed. Unfortunately, truck wheels and boots carried in the seeds of invasive reed canary grass, which is nearly impossible to control. According to Birch, “We had one of the richest prairies in the country, and we blew it.”

  Today, as we paddle up to the same shoreline where we have hiked, the riverscape appears familiar yet disconcertingly different, seen through the backwards-looking lens created by approaching a known scene from a different direction. Raised bands of sand running parallel to the river-bank and alternating with narrower bands of shallow water inscribe the sandbar terrain close to the riverbank. At high water, all this sand would be under water and invisible. Low water makes landing easy.

  Despite the reed canary grass, an unfortunate fact of modern ecosystems, we are struck by the fact that the landscape seems to appear pretty much as it must have looked to Native Americans before Europeans arrived in the Lower Wisconsin valley. We look in every direction and see no apparent trace of modern man’s effects on the land. The intermittent and distant hum of traffic on Highway 133 is audible, and jet contrails occasionally cross the sky, but the land itself endures, seemingly unchanged.

  It is not a hot day, but the sun is high and intensely bright in the cloudless sky, lighting the river in classic shimmering midsummer style, relaxing all who travel the Wisconsin today. The five miles to Lone Rock pass quietly. At the low-slung Wisconsin & Southern railroad bridge, a swirl of current around the concrete piers we pass between grasps at the hull, threatening to twist it sideways, jolting us from the midafternoon torpor into which we have slipped. We correct our course.

  And we realize that we’re dog-tired. There’s a spot along Long Island that looks like a good campsite, with the added bonus of a clear view of the bridge at Lone Rock. This old bridge is a beauty. Bob, an engineer by profession, tells me it’s a steel through-truss bridge. I just like its shape, so familiar to one who grew up in southeastern Minnesota in the 1950s and ’60s. Three gracefully arched spans, built with steel that resembles the pieces in an erector set, tie the hills of the south shoreline to low-lying and wooded Long Island, which divides the river both up-and downstream of the crossing. Seen from downstream on the river, the geometric patterns of the bridge structure, interlocking steel triangles of various sizes, form the arched trusses. The name through-truss means that the traffic drives through a boxy tunnel, the sides of which are the truss walls, the steel under the roadbed, and the steel cross bracing that forms the roof of the box. Against the panorama of the meandering river, sprawling sandbars, and green hills, this old bridge seems an organic addition to the scene, and its arches seem even to echo the curved shape of the hilltops. A smaller, less impressive steel bridge, out of sight from our sandbar, crosses the narrow channel that runs between the island and the north bank of the river.

  Another even smaller bridge beyond that one crosses a slough named Long Lake, which connects to the wildlife area known as Bakken’s Pond, a maze of lovely off-channel water on the north side of the river, a flowage created by the DNR and known to them as Bakken’s Pond Wildlife Area. To the northern pike, smallmouth bass, and panfish, it is home, the place where they spawn. These waters all are part of the watershed of Bear Creek, which runs for twenty-seven miles down a narrow valley through the bluffs north of Lone Rock and flows into the Wisconsin about three miles back down the river from here. From north of Lone Rock, Highway 130 follows the Bear up into the Driftless hills to its headwaters. A good trout stream in its upstream half, the Bear is fed by cold-water tributaries such as Little Bear Creek and Marble Creek, and Little Bear and Marble are fed by springs in the hills north of Lone Rock. Everything that happens back in the hills, on the Bear and on its feeder streams, and down in the valley, in the sloughs and in the flood-plain lakes, ends up in the Wisconsin. It’s all connected.

  There’s also a mussel bed around here somewhere, but as I don’t know the exact location, we’re not even going to think about looking for those ever-elusive mussels.

  Various other canoeists, also ready to stop for the night, begin homesteading on adjoining sandbars. A group of boisterous young guys sets up their encampment of six tents, a raucous process that seems to require a lot of beer. As we cook our evening meal, their good-natured antics provide dinner entertainment. Audience and players meet on the sandbar stage.

  As the sun sets, we celebrate our twenty-two mile day, our nation’s birthday, and the everlasting beauty of this river by eating most of a package of Oreos for dessert.

  And then the fireworks begin. From our tent, where we have retired for the night, we watch sleepily and happily. On the sandbar next door, firecrackers explode in rapid succession, and bottle rockets light the dusky shadows of the wide river valley. Our energetic young neighbors are now dark shadowy figures running through the shallows waving sparklers, splashing, whooping and laughing. Fireworks are officially forbidden on the Lower Wisconsin, but at this moment, drowsily watching stars streak through the night sky, we don’t care.

  It’s the Fourth of July on the mighty Wisconsin.

  Out of the Fog

  July the fifth. Fog again. Even after the sun is up, the air is still so gauzy with moisture that the Lone Rock bridge is invisible. Our sandbar, its margin still saturated with recently departed river water, is bordered by a wide bank of dark sand. The river dropped during the night, it looks like at least five inches. I ponder how this change to our sandbar is connected to the dam upstream at Prairie du Sac as we stand in the cool fog, eating muesli and yogurt, staring upstream, shivering a little, waiting for the landscape to emerge from behind the veil.

  As we eat, the ghostly outlines of the steel bridge emerge, ever so quietly and indistinctly, backlit by the rising sun. The only sound we hear is the murmur of the river and muted bird song, until the machine-gun chatter of a pileated woodpecker assaulting a tree abruptly echoes through the quiet river valley. In the aftermath of the Fourth, no one else is on the water yet, and the tents of the party boys on the adjoining sandbar are zipped up tight.

  Though mist still hangs over the water, the rhythm of the river calls and we head upstream toward the bridge. On our right, the channel clings tightly to the layered stone bluff face, where road builders had to carve out a ledge for Highway 130. At the boat landing upstream of the bridge, a pair of wild turkey hens struts along the sandy margin at the mouth of Otter Creek, herding a clutch of ten fluffy little poults. Out in the channel, a small flock of canoeists floats past and waves to us, their arms tracing ghostly movements in the heavy air.

  Wisconsin River near Lone Rock

  For almost an hour, we paddle through wispy clouds, and then the fog is gone. And under a clear sky, the day heats up in a pleasant way. Paddling the quiet edge of the serpentine thalweg when we can find it, wading the sandy shallows when no passage is visible, watching startled birds take flight from the low brushy banks of small islands, wading, paddling—the morning passes quickly. We’re feeling strong, and surprisingly soon, we see the first Spring Green landing just upstream, partly concealed by trees.

  “We averaged two and a half miles per hour this morning,” Bob calls over his shoulder with a grin. “Want to get a burger at Bob’s?”

  “It’s not even eleven.”

  “But I’m hungry. Breakfast was a long time ago.”

  Getting over to the landing involves finding our way around a massive sandbar flanked by a pod of smaller bars, a whale with her calves. This is a task that becomes more complicated and strenuous than it should be. Finally we resort to having me tow the canoe. Up the hill, the diner has just opened for lunch and it’s already crowded. Formerly known as Bob’s Riverside Landing, the business at this landing is now called Wisconsin Riverside Resort. The same family has owned it for almost a half-century and the younger generation just changed the name. We like this place, in part because it’
s a low-key family business, in part because of the former name, and in part because of the view from the diner. We carry our burger baskets to a table by the window.

  On the beach far below us, our slim white canoe rests gracefully on the sand—as graceful as a canoe completely stuffed with gear can look—paddles propped up and ready to grab, life jackets at the ready. A child runs past and disappears; no one else is in sight. Beyond the beach, the Wisconsin spreads its wide watery self, peaceful bands of pale blue water and golden sand, punctuated by the bright midsummer green of small islands and shoreline. Beyond the water, the rounded wooded hills of the Driftless, the bluffs that bound the wide river valley, frame the scene in deepest green. The burger tastes wonderful.